An empty statement is used to provide no statement, although the JavaScript syntax would expect one.

The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.

Syntax

;

Description

The empty statement is a semicolon (;) indicating that no statement will be executed, even if JavaScript syntax requires one. The opposite behavior, where you want multiple statements, but JavaScript only allows a single one, is possible using a block statement; it combines several statements into a single one.

Examples

The empty statement is sometimes used with loop statements. See the following example with an empty loop body:

Note: It is a good idea to comment the intentional use of the empty statement, as it is not really obvious to distinguish between a normal semicolon. In the following example the usage is probably not intentional:

if (condition); // Caution, this "if" does nothing!
killTheUniverse() // So this always gets executed!!!

Another Example: An if...else statement without curly braces ({}). If three is true, nothing will happen, four does not matter, and also the launchRocket() function in the else case will not be executed.